Novelty is a dangerous thing. The new is immediately fascinating to those of the normal persuasion. I believe, as the kids would say, it fascinates the 'monkey brain'and allows for fun stuff. I crave novelty. But are our cravings not dangerous? It is another opportunity for us to err. I suppose that cravings are not per-se dangerous, just as hunger is not dangerous when it is sated moderately (neither eating too much nor too little food).
We (or I) have been conditioned to bask in novelty. New things coming in from Amazon, new games, new books, new shows being added to Netflix/Hulu/whatever. I understand that the elimination of novelty is impossible. But I do not like that our desire for novelty is being used for corporate profit.
It is low-hanging fruit to blame all the problems of the modern West on large corporations. I will certainly not disagree, the techno-rebel that I am, that some of the problems do come therefrom. However, those detractors often fail to consider the marginal benefit of megacorporations existing.
See, for every large Amazon shipping facility, there are (and I estimate these figures but the point still stands) five to ten maintenance/janitorial staff, forty to fifty package-grabbers/loaders, another fifty to one hundred drivers, a van-maintainer or two (since they've now switched to electric vans), perhaps four clerks and administrators, a manager or eight, a few IT-guys, and a local HR/corporate liason or two. And let us not forget the thirty to fifty night-shift stockers and warehouse runners. Doubtless there are more positions, but those seem to me like the ones most necessary to run a smooth operation at a shipping facility. Not to mention the hundreds of factory workers, sailors, pilots, truckers and the like involved in the production of the goods sold by the corporate overlord.
All of these men and women earn their livelihoods through this operation. Perhaps they sustain a family (at varying levels of ease and comfort). I am sure that they are underpaid compared to the work that they do (are we not all?). I do not pretend that Amazon is nice to its employees. I would hazard a guess that none of the large corporations (be them national like Target or Walmart) or international (Meta, Apple, Google, Amazon) have clean hands. However, if by some miracle the world were able to boycott Amazon for six months and it went under or had massive layoffs, sure, Bezos would have to sell a few of his yachts, but it's the regular people squeezed out by the belt-tightening initiatives. And, unfortunately, that would hurt the little people so much more.
I wish not to be known as a defender of big tech or big corporate. But I also urge the world not to see things so black-and white, lest the world cuts off its arm or tears out its eye in the name of dogmatic purity.
[That last line makes me sound like a subjectivist or Reddit-atheist. I'm most assuredly the opposite.]
It's easy to see the gross negative that they bring into the world. It's also equally as easy (though not quite as openly done, for fear of being called a corporate shill) to see only the gross positive. The net, perhaps, may be a negative ceteribus paribus, yet the world has not collapsed itself at the slight-to-moderate negative's existence. We have learned to adapt. Perhaps part of that adaptation is to fight back. But insofar as we resist the bad, we must put forth equal or greater effort into preserving and growing the good, particularly on the individual level.
I will write more about the nature of work later. It has puzzled me that we must work. It seems to be in our nature. Even without the cultural millieu of NEETs (both intentional NEETs and unintentional NEETs), I believe that man must engage himself in some sort of craft or labor lest he lose his mind.
In my own personal experience, the times of my life when I was not working nor studying but rather playing video games and rotting my brain with consuming content have been the least happy. Sure, I may have had all my physical needs met --a roof over my head, plenty of food in the pantry, a Pandora's Bag of Holding of entertainment-- but my psyche dearly suffered.
Just as above I exhort that I be not taken as a defender of corporations, neither do I wish to be a workaholic. Rather, if the thirty six hour work week were standard (or perhaps even thirty two), many people would be happier, our needs would be still fulfilled, and there would be much more time for the enjoyable things in life.
The Bertrand Russell article from nearly one hundred years ago extrapolates this in greater detail, though I hesitate to call myself completely in agreeance with Russell about everything.
In Praise of Idleness | Bertrand Russel
There is an ever-growing list of things I would write about, things to do, ideas to meditate on, articles and books to read. Pictures to paint, the like. I would have that there were more time to finish them.
Perhaps I
Made with love in USA. Site Mirrored from Gemini Protocol. It's better there :) Contact Me Back to HomeIt seems that I immediately lost my train of thought while writing the above line. The pen of my mind has ran empty.